


Priorities

by madamebadger



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Class Issues, F/F, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4735760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra and Sera are different in a lot of ways... but they have a surprising amount in common. Especially when it comes to what matters to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Priorities

It is not difficult to notice the pattern to Sera's pranks. Not even to Cassandra, who knows herself to be somewhat ignorant of nuance.

When Sera pranks around Skyhold, most of what she does it harmless. She dumps water on Josephine, puts Cullen's desk out of alignment. She swaps salt and sugar in the kitchens and releases a dozen toads in Vivienne's wardrobe. While in Vivienne's wardrobe, she steals some of that glittery stuff that's in fashion in Orlais these days, and uses it to make a grenade which she detonates in the armory of the recruit barracks—and the recruits are fantastically shimmery for _weeks_. Some of her pranks show a remarkable amount of ingenuity and skill: when Dorian was reading one of Brother Genitivi's more obscure journals, she swiped it, picked apart the binding, meticulously turned every other page upside-down, and then carefully re-stitched it and replaced it.

But when Sera pranks visiting nobles, sometimes her pranks are not... precisely _pranks_. Their correspondence mysteriously goes missing, and then ends up published in some Kirkwall rag. (Cassandra _knows_ that Sera reads her journal, but Sera never does anything untoward with that information besides occasionally tease her about it. But guests, noble guests, have no such guarantee.) Where she might slip salt into Solas' tea, she slips creosote into the food of visiting nobles. Where she might pick Varric's pockets for loose change or Blackwall's pockets for those peppermint sweets she likes (and Cassandra suspects that Blackwall keeps peppermint sweets in his pockets half because the horses like them and half because Sera likes them and not at all actually for himself), when she steals from visiting nobles, she steals things that are actually valuable. Not terribly often—if it was often, it would be untenable, would damage the Inquisition's reputation, and would need to be stopped—but when a particularly odious and abusive noble shows up, Cassandra ends up counting down the days until they claim that some ring or necklace or other bit of frippery has gone missing.

(She has also noticed that, not long after, there will be a celebration in the poorest parts of the refugee camp, with suckling pig on a spit and vast rashers of bacon, and lamb stew, and boules of white bread as big as your head, and tarts and custards and pastries, and boiled sweets that keep the children's jaws stuck shut for hours, and kegs of beer and wine flowing well into the night. Sera, it seems, has very little use for wealth herself.

Sera will never admit to the thefts. But once, long ago, when Sera had first gotten her share of the loot when they returned from one of the Inquisitor's jaunts, and then the loot was gone and the money too but there was beef in the camps for the first time in weeks... Cassandra had asked. "Don't you think it would be a good idea to save at least some of your money?"

"I do save it," Sera had said. "I save it in other people. Best place for it, yeah?")

So it is that Cassandra is sent, grumbling, from the War Room at Skyhold to find Sera in the tavern, where she's puttering around in the room she's commandeered—the room stuffed to the gills with things that she has scavenged at best, stolen at worst. "Sera," she says. "I was sent to tell you to please leave alone the delegation from Val Henar. The negotiations are delicate enough as it is, without any of them vomiting all night, or distracting us all with complaints of missing jewelry."

"Huh," Sera says. She's poking through a box of odds and ends and hasn't even looked up at Cassandra.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, yeah, no pulling one over on the new stuffed britches, I get it." Sera straightens and sighs. "I'll try. But sometimes they act so noble noble-y and my hands just get away from me."

Cassandra grunts. But her curiosity is piqued, despite herself. "And yet I am, I suppose you would say, 'noble noble-y,' and so is Lady Montilyet, and Dorian, and of course Inquisitor Trevelyan, and you seem to be able to keep yourself from damaging us in any significant way."

"Yeah, well, there's nobles," Sera sits on her window seat with a thump, "and then there's _nobles_ , yeah? There's some I just—I can't help myself. The ones who look at you and they sum you up and they dismiss you, all in one glance. ' _Oh, bit of elfy trash here, I'll look her up again when I need my wine glass filled or a romp in the sheets_ ,' like. Them, I figure it's just fair payment if I nick something out of a pocket or give 'em the runs all night."

"Still, Sera—"

"It's the ones who think they know all you're about just with a look, you know? The ones—"

"—who look at you and decide what you are and what you are to be, and sum you up and dismiss you with one judgment," Cassandra finishes. "The ones who look at you and say, 'it doesn't matter what you want, this is who you are, and you will submit to it.' The ones who force you into a mold, and then, when you do not fit that mold, despise you for being too much, too large, to unwieldy for the shape they desire. Who try to cut away the parts of you that they cannot make fit. As if you are a tree to be pruned. As if you are a gown to be tailored. As if you are a gemstone to be _cut_."

Sera looks at her, now, a sideways look, green as mage-fire (not that Sera would ever thank her for that comparison). "It's not the same, you know," she says. "Being made to wear pretty dresses and learn to dance, like, it's not the _same_ as being made to work until your back is broken and then to take it without bitching when they stiff you wages and you have nothing to take home to the little ones who are crying with hunger. It's not the same as being cut down in the street because someone with a title thinks you looked at 'em sideways. It's not the same as being starving and everyone looks at you, like, poor bum, must be a drunk, must be a whore—never thinking what might have put you there, who you might have been, who you might _be_ , just happy to put you in the box."

Cassandra inhales, exhales. "I know," she says.

"Right," Sera says. Her gaze turns back, out the window, across from the tavern to the main keep. "But I guess you do understand, a little. More than most. That's something."

Cassandra is quiet for a little time, thinking. Then she says, "I became a Seeker at first for vengeance, but then, eventually, to try to serve. I would like to say that I serve more than just the wealthy. But—"

"You try. That's better than most." Sera's smile is lopsided. "Even if you do have your head up your arse most of the time."

Cassandra snorts. "You are too kind."

"I know, right?" Sera unfolds herself from her window seat. "You go ahead and tell Lady Josie that I'll steer clear of the nobles this time. But you owe me one."

"I do? Or Lady Montilyet does?"

"You do." Sera winks. "You're the one who asked."

It is nearly six weeks later before Sera calls in her favor, by which point Cassandra has nearly forgotten. But when Sera does, she remembers, and sighs, and says, "All right. So long as it involves nothing illegal."

"Come on, Seeker, loosen up," Sera says.

But Cassandra does not relax until Sera has towed her down, through Skyhold, to the refugee camp. It is in better shape than she had remembered from her last visit—the flimsy tents have been replaced with more sturdy tents, much like the skin tents the Dalish use year-round, and with round wooden buildings that, though temporary, are sturdy. Cullen's men have helped with the digging of proper latrines, and there is an infirmary (word is that, in addition to non-magical healers, Dalish and Solas sometimes show up to help—Dalish insisting throughout that her ability to close a wound with a touch or drive off infection with a gesture is an archer trick), and a small shrine where Mother Giselle sometimes holds services, and sometimes—to her surprise—Leliana does. 

Today they are celebrating.

Cassandra gives Sera a sharp look, but Sera only laughs. "Yeah, I paid for it, but I didn't nick it off any of Lady Josie's guests."

"Where from, then?"

"Not telling. My secret. But nothing Inquisition-ish, like. So you don't need to worry."

Apparently, the way Cassandra is going to pay off her favor is by eating druffalo ribs that were baked in a pit, until the grease runs down her wrists. By drinking terrible beer out of a warm keg. By laughing as the Singquision—and why had it never occurred to her that there might be poor refugees in the Singquisition?—sings a satirical ballad about the war between Celene and Gaspard. By entertaining the children of the camp with tales of dragon-slaying.

At the end of the night, Cassandra is warm with beer in her veins, and when Sera tows her to her feet to dance, she goes with her. She is not good at this kind of dancing; she knows how to fight, she knows how to waltz, but— 

—but Sera laughs in a way that is clearly not meant to be an insult, then drags her around in a line-and-circle dance that requires no knowledge and little grace, until Cassandra is dizzy and laughing too.

At the end of the night, Sera delivers her back to the door of the forge. "Not bad, Seeker," she says. "You're not real people, but you're not far off."

"I'm fake people, then?"

Sera rolls her eyes. "You're less cute when you play stupid, you know that? Go on, sleep it off."

"I'm not _drunk_."

"Yeah, well, maybe I am," she says. And she leans up to press a kiss to Cassandra's cheek. Cassandra pulls back, but she's more surprised than truly shocked.

"Sorry," Sera says, ducking her head with the first real embarrassment Cassandra has seen out of her all night—and maybe the first embarrassment Cassandra has seen out of her ever.

And she's gone before Cassandra can decide whether she wanted that apology, or not.

**Author's Note:**

> “I save it in other people” is of course a reference to Terry Pratchett’s _A Hat Full of Sky_ :
>
>> “Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. “You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick, there, with the leg, he’s mean as a cat, but there’ll be a big cut off beef on my doorstep before the week’s end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I’ll get more lard, ham, bacon, and sausage turning up than a family could eat in a year.”
>> 
>> “You will? What will you do with all that food?”
>> 
>> “Store it,” said Miss Level.
>> 
>> “But you–”
>> 
>> “I store it in other people. It’s amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany’s expression. “I mean, I take what I don’t need around to those who don’t have a pig, or who’re going through a bad patch, or who don’t have anyone to remember them.”
>> 
>> “But that means they’ll owe you a favor!”
>> 
>> “Right! And so it just keeps going around. It all works out.”
> 
> Sera’s methods always did strike me as a particularly sarcastic, urban type of Discworld witch.


End file.
